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May 2, 2006
Women looking out
Every woman who has an abortion has a story to tell.
Photo courtesy of David and Lucile Packard Foundation.

Though abortion is one of the most common procedures experienced by the world’s women, rarely do we hear women who have actually undergone abortions tell their stories. In a global environment where abortion is increasingly contested, women’s views on abortions are drowned out by the political and religious debates surrounding reproductive rights.

Ipas has created “Voices,” a database that collects women’s abortion stories from around the globe. In “Voices,” we hear from an Ethiopian mother who didn’t know her 14-year-old daughter was pregnant until the teen was dying from an unsafe abortion; how an Egyptian family tried to scrape together money to end their daughter’s pregnancy; and how even women in the United States sometimes face barriers when they want to terminate unwanted or unsafe pregnancies. These stories are gathered from newspaper articles, scientific journals, publications of other reproductive-rights organizations and whenever possible, colleagues working directly with these women around the world.

Today, Ipas launches an occasional series, “No Longer Silent: Women’s Abortion Stories,” which brings some of these women’s tales to the forefront. These stories illustrate a common global reality: that women often have little control over their reproductive health and little access to the services they need. Yet, they also expose the equally concrete ways that women’s individual differences — including where they live, the size of their incomes and their educational levels — are factors in whether they can access safe abortion care and the treatment they’re afforded.

In this first installment of “No Longer Silent,” we show how two women — one 45 and living in the United States, the other 17 and from Peru — were stymied in their efforts to end pregnancies where there was significant evidence of fetal abnormality and threat to their lives.

Janet, 45, lived in the U.S. state of Montana. She operated a ranch with her husband and though farming brought in some income, the couple had to rely on Medicaid for their health care. With a farm, five children and elderly parents, Janet had many responsibilities, and when she fell 16 feet while repairing the roof one day, she knew she had a problem.

“I felt a ‘goosh’ of water, and seemed like the same feeling as when my water broke when I’d had my kids. I made an appointment to see my doctor, and a week later he said I was 17 weeks pregnant. The ultrasound showed that there was no amniotic fluid left in the sac, but that the fetus’ heart was beating. The doctor said that it wouldn’t survive, and that my medication for Lyme disease was known to cause birth defects.

“Because he’d delivered my kids, I trusted him and asked him to do an abortion. He said that even though he knows how and is pro-choice, he couldn’t, because his hospital won’t allow them. He wished me luck, and warned me to get to the hospital fast if I started to hemorrhage, as I did with my last three pregnancies. The last one was so bad I almost died. The hospital is an hour and 40 minutes from our house.”

Though Janet was clearly in danger, Montana’s Medicaid program doesn’t pay for abortions. By the time Janet raised the money and found a physician three hours away to perform the abortion, she was 19 weeks along.

The night before the scheduled abortion, she began to bleed severely. Rushed to a hospital, Janet continued hemorrhaging, but the medical staff refused to empty her uterus. They suggested flying her to Utah, where there was a special facility for extremely premature babies. But at 19 weeks, the child couldn’t have lived. Faced with no other option, Janet went through delivery; the child was born seriously deformed and died soon after.

Though thankful that she’s alive, Janet is furious at the system that wouldn’t listen to her wishes and work to save her life.

“At every step, the life of the fetus was more important than my own life. I’m angry that my own doctor wouldn’t do the abortion. Why should abortion be separate from any other medical procedure? I’m angry that the hospital wouldn’t let me have an abortion, even with my risks and medical condition!”

***

Thousands of miles away, in Peru, a 17-year-old girl — known only by the initials, K.L. — was 12 weeks pregnant when she was told the fetus had no brain, a condition called anencephaly, and little chance of survival.

Moreover, her life was in danger, too. Under Peruvian law, which allows abortion when the woman’s life is in jeopardy, K.L. was entitled an abortion.

But when she requested one, doctors refused. Not only was K.L. forced to carry the pregnancy to term, but she was also forced to breast-feed the child, who only had fluid where his brain should have been. After the child’s inevitable death, K.L. entered therapy to deal with the aftermath of her trauma.

In 2005, K.L.’s case was heard by the U.N. Committee on Human Rights, which ruled that denying a legal abortion is a human-rights violation.

For more information, contact:
Kirsten Sherk
Senior Associate, Media Relations
e-mail: sherkk@ipas.org
phone: 919.960.5612
fax: 919.929.0258